Igor Stravinsky ; English translation by Arthur Knodell and Ingolf Dahl ; preface by George Seferis.

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Some good (and some specious) phrases from one of music's finest phrase-makers; a fascinating and sporadically valuable attempt to come to grips with the metaphysics of music; and a rich assortment of historical aper?? us. More than that, it is, of course, an intimate profession of faith revealing the detailed ideological context of the music; it is also the source of that unforgettable advice to the violinists: "It is ill becoming when playing, to spread one's legs too far apart." During the academic year 1939-1940, Stravinsky delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. He spoke in French. An English translation appeared in 1947, and now this bilingual edition enables the reader to study both the language in which Stravinsky conceived his "lessons" and the excellent English translation...printed on the facing pages...The six lectures that make up "Poetics" take the form of an "explanation of music..."ÝThe book remains a quintessence of Stravinsky's reactions to the phenomenon of music. "Poetics of Music" offers the most coherent statement of the unchanging values behind Stravinsky's many apparent shifts of manner: his insistence, for example, that music should be a revelation of a higher order to be faithfully executed by the performer, rather than a medium of self-expression to be interpreted. Above all, the composer must submit to rules, no matter how arbitrary, for "the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit." -- G. W. Hopkins "Musical Times"Meer lezen...